Why do we go on a pilgrimage?
To visit a sacred site as a pilgrim - part holiday, part festival, part spiritual retreat - is something we humans have done since the beginning of our history.
In Great Britain, you can trace the pilgrim routes to Avebury, Stonehenge, Arbor Low, and many, many more Neolithic sacred places that have been in use for 6,000 years or more. The earliest sign that a particular location was considered sacred was the discovery, near Stonehenge, of three huge wooden pillars, like totem poles, stained bright red in the midst of what had been a clearing in the great forest that covered the hills.
What activities were carried out there we cannot know. At Stonehenge itself, however, as well as at the other sites erected at about the same time, archaeologists have found large piles of animal bones that have clearly been gnawed by human teeth. They think that men and women, whose own remains show that they came from many parts of the British Isles, gathered there at special times: Midwinter, Solstice, Harvest, and Spring. The monuments themselves were of a sacred, symbolic nature, though what was the nature of the spirits they represent is anyone's guess. Harvest Gods; storm Gods; fertility Goddesses? The spirits who lived in the Sun, the Moon, the stars? All these and more, no doubt.
And there was a physical, festive side to pilgrimage, then as well as now. For besides cooked animal bones, later pottery fragments show that fermented beverages were also drunk - in other words, the pilgrims worshipped their gods or goddesses and then went on to celebrate a huge barbecue!
Drinking, feasting and worshipping: these acts, though probably not in that order, have been common to pilgrims since human beings first began to settle the land and farm it.
Today, we know that many of the most beloved sacred sites in the United Kingdom were pagan before they were Christian. I'm sure this applies to many sacred sites around the world, but I'm talking about those I know best, the ancient gathering grounds which have seen hundreds of generations of pilgrims and are still in use today
In the southern part of England, you can trace the growth of these sites along two major ley lines, the Michael and Mary Lines, described in the excellent book "The Sun and the Serpent" by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst.
For most of my life, since the late 1960s, I've dowsed the ley lines and venerated the sacred sites around Glastonbury, Avebury, Stonehenge and the Rollright Stones. They are very powerful accumulators and distributors of earth energies. Anyone with a strong intuition and open mind may learn to dowse. I use special copper rods for the purpose, but there are some parts of England where the lines themselves disperse amongst watery sites and are impossible to trace, and one such area is the Fens of East Anglia, where I live now.
The most sacred site here is Walsingham, where the two national shrines to Our Lady of Walsingham are located, one belonging to the Anglican Church, the other to the Roman Catholic Church. In prehistoric times this area, too, was sacred to pagan goddess worship. You can understand why when you make your way along the slightly raised meadows and by the many streams that water the site; the whole place exudes sacred feminine energy, very peaceful and soothing, like balm to a troubled soul. A fine, diffuse, watery light pervades the air, and earthy scents rise from the ground.
The history of Walsingham, which has been a Christian pilgrim destination for a thousand years, is very interesting; most of it is available on the internet, and I won't repeat it here.
To me, as a Catholic, the most beautiful part of Walsingham is the 14th century Slipper Chapel, which has been beautifully restored and now contains the fine statue of Our Lady of Walsingham. St Mary is here shown as a Saxon maiden, strong and firm, carrying her divine Son in her arms and proudly showing Him to the many generations who've come to seek help at this much-loved site.
Royalty visited Walsingham, along with many hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women, seeking consolation and help from the Mother of God who promised the founder of Walsingham, one Lady Richeldis, that nobody who sought Mary's help there would return empty-handed.
The tyrannical king, Henry VIII, destroyed as much of it as he could when he wrenched England away from her Catholic faith and seized control of the church's lands and buildings. Oliver Cromwell finished off what Henry had started, but two hundred years later a change of heart by the leading churchmen and the gifts of some very generous benefactors made possible the restoration of this healing, beautiful place.
Recently my husband and I made our own private pilgrimage to Walsingham. We needed a sanctuary of peace and restoration while we sought advice around some difficult decisions we needed to make. And we didn't leave empty-handed! The blessing of Walsingham, its beauty, peace and tranquillity, gave us the surroundings we needed to go deep within and to ponder with our Higher Centres what would be the next steps on our journey through life.
We realized that next year we will need to move house so that we can live closer to our children. As we are both growing older, and my husband will retire in January, we are looking for somewhere where we can have more contact with our family, and also where we can live close to the sea as well as to beautiful countryside. The prospect of moving house, though, with literally thousands of books and a garage load full of heaven-knows-what old furniture and possessions, some belonging to kids who left home long ago, is daunting. But what we took from our pilgrimage to Walsingham was the confidence that this is our right direction, the "very next thing", as Mrs Pogson says, and that we will be helped at each step of the way.
In confirmation, on our return we discovered that a distant relative had left us a small legacy. It will help with our moving expenses, of course, but even more than that, it helped us to see that this really is the correct way for us to go. It was as though Mary, Our Lady of Walsingham, had reached down from heaven to ensure that we really did not leave empty-handed! Spiritually and physically, we left refreshed and comforted.
Chaucer wrote of April being the time when "folk long to go on pilgrimages". For us, it was the lovely Autumn season, of rich leaf colours, woodsmoke, and golden harvest that saw our pilgrimage. Walsingham is not far from the sea, and the sound of the waves and the seabirds lifted our spirits, while the many excellent farm shops of Norfolk filled our bodies with fine food!
A pilgrimage is a very important journey. It can nourish every centre. In a way, our whole life is a pilgrimage, but in the individual journeys we make to sacred places, we gain new impressions - the favourite food of Essence - and our spirits are regenerated.
We are seeking God; we are seeking rest for our souls; we are seeking ourselves. A pilgrimage is the chance to live for a while in a higher state of consciousness, remembering ourselves and our aim, as we take in the sights, sounds and energies of the sacred site.
Ideally, we would be able to see each day, each moment, anew, without the baggage of the past. If we could do that, impressions would always fall upon Essence, and everything would indeed be more vivid, as Gurdjieff said. Each new day would be a pilgrimage. As we are, we need to set aside special times for these experiences.
A pilgrimage is not simply a holiday. It is that, of course, but it is so much more. A pilgrimage may be a journey to Walsingham, or Jerusalem, or to the tomb of Rumi.
Reverently undertaken, it will always lead back to the centre of our being, where alone we are truly at home.
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